So, on a day when hundreds of desperate people died off the coast of Egypt, in foul overcrowded unseaworthy boats, and when Aleppo was ablaze (none of which, admittedly will affect the Brit government, who want no truck with these refugee types), and when a report came out highlighting the danger of "button batteries" to children, the BBC decided to lead with a piece crowing about the fact that, even though Channel Four managed to poach the 'Great British Bake Off' from them, the Great British Mary Berry is not going to leave because of "loyalty to the BBC". Take a minute, dear Munguin readers, to dry your eyes...
(Incidentally, nice Mary. What fun it must be, to be so rich you can afford to turn down steady work out of loyalty to Auntie.)
I don't particularly want to knock the GBB. I don't watch tv, but if I did GBB would be far down on my watch list. However, I'm sure many people get a great deal of enjoyment from it.
That said, everything has a place in life and surely it says something horrific about the BBC and/or the Great British public that a downmarket, cheap-to-produce tv show is more important than real news about real people's real lives and their real deaths.
Thank heavens I don't give this organisation a brass bean.
I have nae idea who these people are. However in the middle of the night I had the misfortune to be unexpectedly awake. Aside from contributing my tuppenceworth to your previous thread, I had the misfortune to put on Radio 4 extra. A program of alleged comedy was presented by a Miss Sue Perkins. I neither slept, nor cracked even a modest smile for the entire excruciating half hour.
ReplyDeleteAs a long term listener I have noted the frequent appearances of Aunty's favoured "talent". Ms Calman is one, Mr Merton another. I expect if one achieved "celebrity" status as one of the favoured few it would be in your interest to stay on message. After all, as any observer of Messrs Saville, Norton, Edmonds et all - amongst others - will have noticed, the State propagandist rewards its loyalists handsomely and long after their sell by date.
I sure as hell don't miss the idiot box .....
S.A.
I appreciate that the thread is actually about the MOT priorities, and am sorry to go a bit off topic. However they really are a piss poor excuse for a news service or even an entertainment provider these days.
DeleteS.A.
Ah I've heard of Mary Berry. The rest of them no. I think she's been around a while and is something of a celebrity. Cook books or something.
DeleteThe BBC is a joke. As far as I can see the quality of programming is abysmal. BBC 2 the only decent channel for wild life and not much more.
The comedy isn't funny any more. Even the News Quiz has gone down drain.
I'd never pay to watch it.
Privatise it!
Tris, I too decline to pay for their propaganda.
ReplyDeleteIt's beyond a joke that we have to when there are hundreds of channels free, and we have to pay for the UK government's propaganda.
DeleteNo matter how unpopular this view might be, I'm going to defend the BBC a bit here. You know what, "The Fall" was a really great watch. I'm a huuuuge Stewart Lee fan so "Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle" has been a real boost, especially since seeing him live involves a long journey. Who can forget "The Thick of it"? On Radio 4 I really enjoy "The Infinite Monkey Cage" and Stuart Maconie's "Freak Zone" on Radio 6. These are just my personal faves but I would guess everyone could name one or two shows that they really, really love. The hit rate might be small amidst a mass of truly terrible telly but if you've ever suffered Swiss or German broadcasting you do come to appreciate these personal gems. Putting GBBO aside for a moment, there are still genuinely odd and strange shows being made on the BBC that would find no other natural home. I'd be sad if it all stopped.
ReplyDeleteObviously, I never watch the news or anything like that. I'm not completely stupid.
Well, no, we didn't think you were daft enough to listen to/watch the BBC News. Clearly, if you did then you'd think Nicola Sturgeon was a three headed monster that ate children and Alex Salmond was the devil incarnate.
DeleteThere's no doubt that the BBC can make some good programmes, and of course everyone's taste is different. I mean some people clearly like East Enders!
My problem (apart from the biased news) is that the quality of the programming is generally low, because they have to fill 12+ channels of tv and heaven knows how much radio, 24/7/52.
They've neither the talent nor the money to do it...although if their executives didn't waste so much pretending they were first class people needing to be pampered like royals, the money might go farther... and if some of the "stars" were a little less greedy...
In many respects everyone else's tv is just as bad, for exactly the same reasons. Stars want paid the earth; executives think that they are nobility and we end up with crap programming because they can't afford good stuff.
For my part I reckon that "The Thick of It" was brilliant, but £145 a year for a series of TToI, is hardly value for money.
French tv is dismal too, as is the rest of UK tv.
My point here of course was that the BBC thought Mary Berry's loyalty to it was more important than a few hundred people's lives.
That turned my stomach.
Another post at some point about the BBC... and what to do with the licence fee, methinks.
PS: Terry has a post that involves the good old days of British telly, Auf Wiedersehen Pet (you know, what they say in Germany when they have had Petula Clark on the box).
DeleteIt's a lot more serious than a bit of a laugh about Inspector Lewis before he was an Oxford policeman and learned to talk proper.
Well worth a read and you still get a laugh.
Thank you for your kinds words.
DeleteI do agree that there is just too much. The BBC is also a bit of a behemoth. It probably is too large and has its fingers in too many baked goods. Is there any real need for the BBC to attempt a monopoly on online news and weather? Probably not. I would rather they just made good programmes instead.
The priorities of news items can often seem scandalous.
btw if you think the BBC licence fee is a scandal you should compare it to Swiss Billag. This is a private and completely unaccountable company that collects and re-distributes the license fees. I bet they have amazing office parties.
You're welcome. I think your blog is one of the best on the net.
DeleteIf the state needs a state broadcaster for propaganda reasons (which can be THE only reason you would need one), it should be one tv station. and maybe 2 or 3 radio channels.
I can't help feeling that they should be for stuff that simply wouldn't make money if they were left to commercial companies. Although I'm not 100% sure about that.
Bake offs and treasure hunts and daft talent shows can be done by commercial tv. Rather like Radios one and two.
Strictly Come Ed Balls is not what we should pay for.
There must be a way, in 2016, that can allow you to watch SKY or Channel Four or ITV3 Dave or whatever, without paying for the massive organisation that is the BBC. Perhaps soem way of typing in your licence number if you want to watch a BBC programme, but being able to watch any of the other 500 channels free.
I was never much of a fan, but as tv choices have got bigger and bigger and quality of programming has got worse and worse, the news has become more and more biased and finally the whole child sex nonsense that went on there... sorry. I decided to NOT pay my licence fee.. which means of course, that I can't watch any other channel.
I think that the BBC used to collect its own licence fee but it has been since farmed out to a company called Capita (or as Private Eye calls them, Crapita).
They are a useless bunch of no hopers.
But they must have connections because like the other useless outsourcing companies (G4S, Atos etc), they keep getting contracts no matter what kind of a mess they make of the delivery.
Sky owns 75% of the company which makes said program,
ReplyDeletesee http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28398381
Of ourse they will give their real boss (Mr Murdoch) the prominence he thinks he is due.
Ah, yeah, the Dirty Digger... well, that explains a lot.
DeleteLet them eat cake
ReplyDeleteWell, Mrs Berry will be able to get a job in the canteen at broadcasting house and make it for them.
DeleteShe'll probably be a dame in the next horrors list.
Tris
ReplyDeleteWe can rant all day about the BBC, it is shocking. I have to pay the Turpin tax as I have Sky but would happily do without both if the kids would let me. I never watched the Thick of It but I have heard it was good, but it was years ago now, I would sell it off in a minute and really resent being forced to pay this tax because I own a TV and have Sky.
Their programmes are in the main shocking, presenters like the Berry woman, Merton and Dimbleby get on my nerves, incompetents and rude people making a fortune at our exspence when people go hungry. Throw in Andrew Neil and Scotland 2016 and you pretty much have a vomit inducing gaurantee if you need to throw up badly.
It won't ever change though, it is the propoganda arm for the UK worldwide, other countries even pay for it to keep their own people as ignorant and stupid as many of our own watching this shit. I rarely watch TV at all now, the football, Walking Dead both on Sky. QT very occasionally to remind myself how much I can't stand Dimbleby and to convince myself that he really does hate Scotland and Scots. I watch the parliament channel the most if I am in the house on my own on the PC, it's my background noise. The radio stations are shit, esp Radio Scotland which gets worse by the day, is there anyone in Scotland more disliked than Gary Robertson on radio.
Nope, sell the bloody thing off and give us all a massive rebate for the pain and suffering we have had to endure over the years.
Bruce
Tokyo Kaye?
DeleteA big seller for indy 2 has to be the removal of the tax completely. The state broadcaster - if its deemed we need one - could be funded by subscription or from general taxation, and Sky, cable companies, satellite companies, and anyone who wants to use their own money should be left to it.
I do buy movies and boxed sets - I own a copy of The Fall - but I don't watch TV except when I'm at a hotel. And the last time I had that experience my wife and I looked at each other and switched it off after 5 minutes. Its tripe. You don't need it. Watching paint dry on a reality show - with celebrities you never heard of - would be more interesting.
S.A.
I got rid of it, a while ago. There are better things to do that watch tv most of the time.
DeleteI think what I hate is how cheap and nasty a lot of the programming is.
I don;t know what channel they are all on, but every time I go into someone's house it seems they are looking at house selling, or doing up properties, or antiques, or folk in the jungle or people making a fool of themselves in talent competitions, or the likes of Ed Balls dancing...jeeeez.
Who'd want to watch that?
News coverage is chronic. Jeremy Corbyn and the SNP are like poison to them.
Royals are gods.
And yeah, SA, I've never heard of any of the "celebrities".
On the button Tris. Unlike Kezia.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Conan. Of that, more to follow!!!!
DeleteLooking forward to the day that the middle classes have no cake. End of BBC. Helena
ReplyDeleteThey can have cattle cake.
DeleteI hadn't formatted the link right, had I? It's http://www.thejudge.me.uk/Rants/Rants_20160922.htm. Sorry!
ReplyDeleteThanks Judge :)
DeleteAdding you to blog list.
Delete:)
OK added, but it says that it cannot update with every new post (must be your blog provider)
DeleteLet us now when you have a new post.
Tris.
Oh hell! Where did my original post go?
ReplyDeleteOK, so I'll try it again, as best I can remember it...
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile down here in England's first colony, on Wednesday our 'parliament' (which we're not allowed to call a 'parliament' in case we get ideas above our station) became the first consitituent assembly of the so-called UK to back a 'hard Brexit'. How did this happen? Because 23 Labour AMs voted down a Plaid Cymru motion calling for recognition of the importance to our economy of continued membership of the single market. Instead, the 'comrades' backed a Tory amendment which only talked about access to the single market. Yes, Labour (and the remaining LibDem who they've bought by giving her a minsterial job) voted with not only the Tories but the KIPpers (Neil Hamilton and all) against the best interests of their country, and simply because they want to 'thwart the Nashies'.
My point relevant to this piece is that such a big story did not appear anywhere on the BBC News website (except as a very short paragraph in a different story a day later), and Radio Wales' 'flagship' news programme the next day merely referred to it as, "Plaid Cymru claim that Labour voted with the Tories". Aye, 'claim', when the evidence was right in front of their eyes.
(For a fuller version, see http://www.thejudge.me.uk/Rants/Rants_20160922.htm . I can't format links properly on here)
As for me, I junked my TV nearly ten years ago and have never missed it. My reasons were much the same as some of the ones others have talked about here, but with the escalating evidence of the BBC's egregious political and ideological bias, I feel ever-increasingly vindicated.
It's quite incredible.
DeleteFirst that Labour and the Tories vote the same way now on so many things... that they are voting with the likes of Hamilton defies belief.
And the BBC... what can you say about them except that they'd stink on ice!
Mind you, you wonder when they get time to produce any programmes at all, never mind crap ones, what with all the expenses they have to collect and all the first class travel they do (and they actually do it, unlike Scottish MPs, who only do it according to the Daily Diana), and then there's all the sex they have.
Heavens... no wonder the programmes are so bad.
I'm sorry your post were astray... It is sooooo bloody annoying when you've worked at it and it's gone for good.
Thanks for repeating it.